No one likes a cold rain, but we needed this weekend’s downpour — and much more — to climb out of Midcoast Maine’s ongoing severe drought.
“Overall this was a good soaking that will end the fire season for the year and help upper soil moisture deficits, but the water table deficits will take months of above normal precipitation to completely lift us out of drought status,” Donald Dumont, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s office in Gray, told the Midcoast Villager.
This weekend’s storm dropped 1.85 inches of precipitation in Belfast, 2.9 inches in Camden and 2 inches in Rockland. But coastal Maine needs nearly 18 inches of rainfall over a two-month period to make up for months of below-average precipitation, according to NWS estimates.
Once the ground freezes, water has a harder time penetrating, so groundwater recharge will be reduced or even cut off entirely.
Most of Knox County and part of Waldo County were under “extreme” drought conditions — the second-highest of five tiers — as of the Nov. 5 report from the U.S. Drought Monitor. The rest of both counties were under “severe” conditions.
Statewide, 100% of Maine residents are living under drought conditions. But the most severe conditions have been along the coast, roughly from Portland to Mount Desert Island, as well as in northern Aroostook County, along the St. John River.
Groundwater and streams are running “below” or “much below” normal across the Midcoast, according to NWS. And the Maine Emergency Management Agency has received 19 reports of dry wells in Knox County and 13 in Waldo County.
“The rain we’ve received recently will certainly help but it’s too soon to see how much it might have helped the overall situation,” Knox County Emergency Management Agency Director Candice Richards told the Villager.
To understand why the Midcoast needs so much more precipitation, Richards said it’s helpful to think about rain and drought like a bank account.
“If surface water (rain) is like a checking account, groundwater (well water) is our savings account. So the analogy is that we’ve been living paycheck-to-paycheck, and we can’t yet confirm how much of this weekend’s rain ended up being ‘spent’ immediately in dry soil/streams/rivers vs. ‘saved’ in groundwater,” she explained.
Still, the end of the fire season will be welcome news for Midcoast fire departments, which have been called out to battle more wildland fires than typical this summer and fall.
In late August, a fire broke out atop Ragged Mountain, near the top of the Camden Snow Bowl’s triple chairlift. Fortunately, Snow Bowl employees were able to use the water system used for snowmaking to deliver water to Camden firefighters and quickly extinguish it. But most wildland fires have to be fought with hand tools and whatever water supplies can be delivered to the scene by foot, truck or aircraft.
Along the Maine-New Hampshire border Monday, almost 100 firefighters and two helicopters were still fighting a week-old wildfire in White Mountain National Forest that, as of Monday, Nov. 9, had burned 821 acres and was only 29% contained, according to federal wildfire tracking data.
The Camden fire was linked to a campfire that was not fully extinguished, and authorities think the White Mountain National Forest fire may have started the same way.
So even as the fire risk subsides, the fire is a reminder to be extra careful about burning during a drought.
This story appears through a media partnership with Midcoast Villager.